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1

Dominion General Discussion / A synergy from my first Adventures session

« on: June 05, 2015, 04:53:08 pm »

I haven't really paid any attention to the Adventures strategy talk, so I suppose this is probably already well known, but I came across a combination of cards that seemed to work very well together. The basic combo was Duplicate + Ferry, and I added a few other things to make it run a bit better. The idea was just to buy Silvers for a while (I actually got an Amulet to gain Silvers, but I think this may have been a mistake), then pick up a couple Duplicates, and put a Ferry on the Province pile. Then to get multi-Province turns, you just need to spike $6 on occasion. It's big money with no Golds!

This plan was helped along a bit by Scouting Party, to sift through the junk in my next hand, and Wine Merchant, to help me get $6 with my crummy deck: I didn't mind paying the $2 on off-turns to discard him, since $2 was sometimes all I had after Scouting! I didn't count the turns, but I seemed to have 5 Provinces quite early, and wasn't slowed down enough that I was worried about an engine coming from behind while I finished them off.

2

Game Reports / Sloggiest board I ever saw

« on: February 07, 2015, 05:23:41 am »

Played in Androminion, so no log, but the kingdom was: (Provinces, Estates) Vineyard, Lookout, Philosopher's Stone, Swindler, Sea Hag, Silk Road, Cartographer, Hunting Party, Fairgrounds, Farmland.

After opening Sea Hag / Lookout (for cycling) I grab a Potion, planning for Philosopher's Stone to be my only real way of hitting $6 later on. Then I assemble my 15 uniques, and just buy whatever green I can afford every turn until the end of the game (only one Province though, of course). My one Vineyard was worth a comical total of one point; I kinda expected more, since usually getting 6-point Fairgrounds involves buying at least 8 actions, but not today.

The deck did a great job at what it was supposed to do (buy many mid-range green cards), but it felt terribly low-powered compared to the usual engine or even big money: every time I played Cartographer it was like "Uh, this deck is garbage, discard all four of those please."

3

Other Games / Prismata

« on: December 03, 2014, 02:18:54 am »

Prismata is a really interesting game that appeared on the horizon recently, and just a couple weeks ago alpha access became available to the general public via a Kickstarter reward tier. I picked it up and have been having a great time. I don't imagine every Dominion player will love Prismata, but a lot of them seem to, and I was surprised to see nobody discussing it here.

I recommend watching the Kickstarter rules-intro video, which does a good job of explaining the mechanics, but I'll also make my own effort at summarizing the game. They used to call it MCDS, for Magic-Chess-Dominion-Starcraft, and you can really see the influence of all four of those games clearly.

• Like MtG, you're building up a board of attackers and defenders that you use to damage your opponent's board.
• But instead of constructed decks, the game starts Dominion-style, with similar starting boards and a "base set" of 11 standard units purchasable every game (analogous to Coppers, Silvers, and so on), and an additional random set of "kingdom cards" either player can buy this game.
• And there are no decks, indeed no randomness or hidden information at all: like chess, every turn can be planned ahead of time, if you can think fast enough (hint: you can't). I get the feeling that this is a turn-off for Dominion fans, which I totally get: removing the randomness is a definite trade-off that some people might not like. I wasn't sure at first, and of course I still appreciate randomness in card games, but it's also nice to have Prismata available as a choice where I am really in charge of my own destiny.
• Last, it's like Starcraft in that you're balancing economy, technology, attacking, and defending; and because you have to make tactical decisions about what units to trade for what, the timings to attack at, and stuff like that.

I'd say if you like at least two of those games, Prismata is worth at least checking out; there's a free single-player-only demo you can try if any of this sounds interesting but you don't want to immediately buy it. If any of you do decide to try it, I'd be happy to play some games with you: I'm Mountebank in game.

4

Goko Dominion Online / FDS IRC channel?

« on: September 16, 2014, 12:57:32 am »

Is there an IRC channel, or other persistent "chat room" sort of thing, where f.ds members hang out? Sometimes a game comes up that's interesting and I'd like to share it or ask a question, but writing up a whole forum post is too heavy-weight.

This time, for example, I had a cool kingdom with almost every card coming into play, and a lot of neat interactions. I even bought a Contraband and four Secret Chambers!

Code: [Select]

Vineyard, Secret Chamber, Menagerie, Smugglers, Farming Village, Trader, Treasure Map, Contraband, Goons, Prince
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140915/log.516d31dbe4b082c74d7b3391.1410837620579.txt - if we replaced Treasure Map with something like Spy, I suspect every card would be bought. Either way, it was a fun balancing act to keep deck composition optimal, and it was fantastic using a Princed Menagerie as a Goons counter.

5

Game Reports / A curiously slow game

« on: September 09, 2014, 10:04:00 pm »

I played a game the other day that seemed to go much slower (in turns taken, not real-life time) than I expected, and I don't really understand what happened.

Code: [Select]

Black Market, Hermit, Storeroom, Ironmonger, Pirate Ship, Knights, Mint, Mountebank, Stables, Trading Post
Particularly after I got the only Graverobber from the black market, I had visions of building an engine to play a million knights, and hopefully Goons as well, pulling knights back out of the trash to ensure I "won" the split. And with the help of Knights+Graverobber, I won the Ironmonger split and the Stables split, but...it took me twenty turns to get things going at all, by which point I was in a position to end the game. What puzzles me is why it took me so long. With just one Knight he wasn't attacking me very much, and this seems like a huge engine, with strong draw, great attacks, and a decent village (trashing was there too, but I kept my Coppers around as Stables fuel). I must have done something drastically wrong to take this long to come online. Can anyone provide some feedback on what happened here?

6

Game Reports / A funny Goons golden deck

« on: August 04, 2014, 07:06:55 pm »

I was playing a game on my phone, and I fell into a strategy that I wasn't expecting: an 11-card golden deck. Unfortunately I no longer remember the exact kingdom, but the key features were Goons, Tactician, Chapel; and Crossroads as the only village. There's no potential for a giant Goons engine with a max of four terminals per turn, or three if you want to keep your Tactician in play. But you can guarantee a handful of VP tokens per turn by playing double-tac double-goons, with Chapel to trash the junk you buy.

Now, the AI for Androminion is quite poor, so it didn't buy any Goons and I could support an 11-card deck; with a real opponent you have to shave it down to 10 cards: 2xTactician, 2xGoons, Crossroads, Chapel, Estate, and three rotating junk cards. Each turn you have a draw pile with 4 cards, and 2 in the discard from being Gooned: draw 5 of those 6 off your Tactician, and the last with your Crossroads. Play Chapel to trash the three junk cards you bought last turn, then play both Goons, and discard the Estate to your Tactician; buy three cheap cards for 6 VP. And as long as the supply contains Estates, you can buy-and-trash one of those as well, to get 8 VP in an 11-card deck.

Obviously it's not a gigantic strategy, and most boards containing three power cards like Goons/Tactician/Chapel will have something stronger, but here the rest of the board was so weak none of it seemed viable. I thought it was neat to find a golden deck without Bishop, especially one that can survive a discard attack every turn.

7

Game Reports / Is Sage + Treasure Map a thing?

« on: June 22, 2014, 08:21:12 pm »

I just played a game on this kingdom:

Code: [Select]

Sage, Wishing Well, Farming Village, Navigator, Noble Brigand, Treasure Map, Apprentice, Bazaar, Contraband, Fairgrounds
It looks overall pretty weak: not a very strong engine that I could see, so I started looking for big money enablers; there doesn't even seem to be one of those! Treasure Map looked like the closest, and...Sage helps line it up? Maybe? My opponent was also puzzled by this board, but we both decided to "try something" and opened Sage/TM. It all seemed to come together really fast for both of us: we had identical decks at the time our Maps collided, which was on turn 6.

So, I guess my question is: is Sage/TM a decent combo at all, that I should consider playing whenever I see it? Or is it pretty mediocre, only suitable as a last-ditch effort on an otherwise weak board like this one?

8

Game Reports / Is this actually better than Witch BM?

« on: May 28, 2014, 03:07:23 am »

I played a fun engine that was made more difficult by lack of trashing (seems to be a theme for me recently):

Code: [Select]

Apothecary, Sage, Alchemist, Feast, Herald, Monument, Quarry, Golem, Treasury, Witch
It worked fine with only three Curses in my deck, but I think a more focused opponent can just go double Witch and should win the split 7-3 or at least 6-4, which may spell disaster: my deck will work much less well, and his will be able to drain the Provinces faster. Is Witch/BM the way to go, or maybe start with Silver/Silver/Witch/Witch and then start building all this potion-cost nonsense once the cursing has died down? Or...can I point AdamH to this as an example of a great Golem board after all?

9

Help! / How to build Scrying Pool with no trashing

« on: May 26, 2014, 07:42:30 pm »

I recently played this kingdom:

Code: [Select]

Pawn, Scrying Pool, Fishing Village, Masterpiece, Sage, Alchemist, Advisor, Horse Traders, Mining Village, Procession
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?20140526/log.516d31dbe4b082c74d7b3391.1401144597462.txt

I figured even with no trashing, you can eventually get enough SP to draw a million actions, with like FV+HT as payload; Advisor helps a lot by getting your non-actions out of the way, and filling your discard pile with actions for the mid-turn reshuffle (because the opponent will tend to deny you actions). However, I floundered a lot in trying to build it, and I'm sure it's possible to kick off several turns sooner than I did. I eventually won, so maybe this is inappropriate for Help!, but I won only barely against a plan I consider grossly inferior to what I was trying to do, so I think it's still clear I badly misplayed here.

Did I need a second Potion much sooner? Should I have worked Alchemists in sooner? Should I maybe even have opened HT instead of Potion to get me some early economy and buys?

10

Dominion League / Quick Topics for League scheduling?

« on: May 22, 2014, 08:54:23 pm »

There are like a dozen division-specific scheduling threads, which means that the "unread topics" view is very cluttered. Is it possible for us to use QTs (I think this stands for Quick Topics) for this instead of permanent public threads? I don't quite know what they are, but I know that forum games often use these for private or restricted communications; I get the idea that they're like a persistent chat room, or a single-thread subforum that doesn't show up in the Unread Topics view.

Having something like that would greatly improve the usability of the forum, and also the league itself: with the layout Stef has arranged, most post-game discussions will be ignored by most players, because he asked for them to be put in the same thread as the scheduling. I don't care what time division B-2 plans to play their games, but if someone posts a discussion of an interesting game I'd be happy to read about it.

11

Goko Dominion Online / New basic stats page

« on: May 17, 2014, 03:25:43 pm »

I've been curious about some stats recently, and since Andrew graciously gives read-only access to the gokosalvager database to anyone on the forums, I was able to put together something I think f.ds users will find moderately useful. It's very much a prototype at the moment, and being hosted with a lame URL on my own server; it could disappear at any time, but I'll be working with Andrew to get it integrated as a gokosalvager.com page.

It currently lives at http://malloys.org:6789/, and all it does is let you type in a username (case-sensitive - sorry!). Here's what happens for my username. The idea is to see who you've played against most often, and how often you've won against each player. If you want more details (like, how on earth have I won 45% of my games against SCSN?), you can use the existing log-search page to drill down and view individual games.

So, go try it out! Let me know if there's anything wrong, or if there's something more you'd like added (no promises I can do it, of course). Is this something you'd like to live at gokosalvager.com?

12

Game Reports / Dream Coppersmith kingdom - how fast can you empty the provinces?

« on: May 12, 2014, 09:22:40 pm »

My phone generated this kingdom, so I have no log file. But it was truly a massive board:

Provinces/Estates

Feodum, Jack, Remake, Wharf, King's Court
Crossroads, Forager, Tunnel, Urchin, Coppersmith

I opened Forager/Jack, got another Forager and a Crossroads in the next shuffle (awful shuffles), and got my first Wharves on turns 6 and 8. Turns 9, 10, and 11 I got KC and was thinned down enough to reliably KC/Wharf; on turn 12 I got two Coppersmiths and a fistful of Coppers, and on turn 13 my $63 and 7 buys were not quite enough to pile the Provinces, but good enough for a win.

So, how much better could you do playing solitaire? (the awful AI on my phone made this effectively solitaire)

Is it very different in 2p against a competent opponent? I don't see any contention over piles happening; Jack means you can shrug off Urchin attacks; and there's little incentive to green early - it seems like megaturn or nothing. So I imagine it being much the same, but would love to hear why I'm wrong.

13

Game Reports / Shortest games around

« on: May 11, 2014, 12:08:41 am »

Earlier today I played a Governor game that emptied the Provinces in just 10 turns. That's pretty fast, I thought, but I wonder how much faster the fastest games have been, and what cards tend to enable really short games?

I remember Adam and Qvist playing a really fast Hermit + Market Square mirror, which was over in just 7 1/2 turns. I haven't found any games faster than this, but I did find a game that comes close: it turns out Stonemason + Quarry + Wharf is a pretty big deal. Does anyone know of a game faster than these?

Also, note that these hyper-fast games are three-piles, whereas in my Governor game the score was 30-27 with all the Provinces gone. I was sure it's possible to get through the Provinces faster than we did, and indeed Andrew has me covered, picking up 42 VPs at once in a turn-9 finale. So far I haven't found anything faster; can anyone beat the 9-turn Province pile-out?

Edit: I found an improvement, buying all Provinces after 8 1/2 turns, using KC+Bridge with Chapel for trashing and Spy to connect the dots. D C managed to play 9 Bridges on turn 9, and he even politely refrained from piling it on with two free Duchies.

Edit: Qvist pointed out that the Stonemason/Quarry game is not as fast as the Hermit/MS game, so I've fixed that.

14

Game Reports / Back to basics

« on: April 15, 2014, 05:31:17 pm »

I was introducing a new player to the game last night, and after explaining the rules and a tiny bit of strategy I dealt out a random base-only game:

Thief, Council Room, Festival, Library, Adventurer
Cellar, Chancellor, Bureaucrat, Feast, Spy

The Festival/Library engine appealed to me, but with no trashing I wasn't sure whether it would actually work. I've certainly underestimated Council Room + money before, so I suggested she play that while I discover whether the engine is better.

It turns out to work pretty well, with a few Cellars to compensate for Library drawing me a ton of useless garbage. I also think I got some pretty lucky draws, while hers were quite bad: CR missed the shuffle often, and she was hitting 5/5/3 instead of 6/3/3 at a time when another CR wasn't really good for her. In the end I won by a lot (21-39); with more reasonable shuffles I think the engine's margin is not as high, but it clearly wins.

So I have two reasons for sharing this game. One is that it's the first time I've played base-only in like six months, and I was just really pleased to see how much better a player I am now than I was then: my deck was much more focused and smooth, because I was able to formulate a plan from the beginning, and anticipate what I would be needing in the next shuffle. The other reason for sharing is to ask for advice: I'm curious if there are any big pitfalls or opportunities that a more experienced player would see. How would you open, and what's your schedule of buys look like in an ideal world?

I opened Chancellor/Feast, so that I could get up to the $5 cards without having to buy any treasures ever. My next two turns I drew Chancellor with four coppers, so I discarded my deck and bought a Festival each time. Then I picked up a Library, two Cellars (with $4 and two buys), and alternated Festival/Library at about a 1.5:1 ratio (I got another Cellar at some point). At one point I had $4 and decided one Spy would be better than two more Cellars: this seemed really questionable to me, but it worked out okay. Maybe even Thief, to ruin the money player's deck, would have been good? I didn't try it, but I think once the engine is up and running you'd rather just slurp up Provinces than attack.

15

Game Reports / Bridge vs Tournament

« on: April 02, 2014, 04:43:35 am »

I just played a game against temron, on this kingdom:

Code: [Select]

Beggar, Pearl Diver, Vagrant, Menagerie, Steward, Bridge, Conspirator, Fortress, Tournament, Fairgrounds
This looks like a really fun board, and I think a Bridge engine should be able to outrace a Tournament player, but I'm not sure. I opened Tournament/Steward, but I now think that was a big mistake - the extra coin from Tournament quickly becomes irrelevant, and he can block me from using it in the lategame, so another Steward or maybe a Fortress would have been better.

Anyway, just as I'm really starting to fire he buys his fourth and fifth Province, which means I don't have long to come back. After drawing and playing everything, I count things up and realize I have just enough buys to end on a win...as long as I don't trash the Curse he gave me last turn! It's my 10th unique card, making Fairgrounds better than Duchy and getting me the extra edge I needed.

So, I dunno, probably nothing unique here, but I thought you guys might enjoy this kingdom, and I'd be interested to see how well a player better than I am could have built the Bridge deck.

16

Help! / What happened here?

« on: February 04, 2014, 07:05:18 am »

Code: [Select]

Secret Chamber, Squire, Smugglers, Workshop, Farming Village, Silk Road, Throne Room, Counterfeit, Embassy, Merchant Ship
http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140204/log.516d31dbe4b082c74d7b3391.1391514341525.txt

I don't really know what went wrong in this game. In the beginning it seemed like I had more of everything good than he did, but he was able to spike a number of Provinces at times that really surprised me, given his deck. At the end I didn't have enough money to do anything, which I assume was related to having turned up with more Counterfeits than I've ever had in a single deck (silly Smugglers!), but I don't know what I needed to do to time things out better.

17

Game Reports / Jack/-- better than Jack/Silver

« on: January 10, 2014, 10:22:57 pm »

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20140110/log.516d31dbe4b082c74d7b3391.1389409279820.txt

I was not happy getting a 5/2 here, but having an eleven-card deck paid off in a way I didn't expect: I got to shuffle at the end of turn 3, and the card I drew from the shuffle was a Jack! So I got to trash an Estate with my Jack on turns 3, 4, and 5; I don't think it's possible to go this fast with a Jack/Silver opening, and the extra Jack plays gained me back the Silver I wasn't able to get in my initial buy.

Aside: Is Lookout good here? I wasn't sure whether a 4/3 should open Jack/Lookout or Jack/Silver; I like the idea of Lookout, but adding Silvers is probably better than taking out Coppers in a Jack/Plaza deck.

18

Help! / A rats debacle

« on: January 07, 2014, 08:14:43 pm »

Code: [Select]

Herbalist, Fishing Village, Philosopher's Stone, Coppersmith, Nomad Camp, Rats, Trader, Merchant Ship, Possession, King's Court
On this board I wasn't sure if KC would be much good: with no draw at all, I thought it would be rare to connect it with important actions, and so spending the time to build up to $7 might not be worth it. Also, I'm a sucker for Rats (who isn't?), and when I saw what looked like a novel combo for them, I had to go for it: Rats/Trader/Philosopher's Stone just sounded like such fun.

My opponent built up to King's Court and beat me, using Merchant Ship and Nomad Camp as his payload actions; he had enough of them all that he seemed to connect very often. Was my combo no good, or did I just mess it up? After playing through the game once, I now think opening Trader was a big mistake: I had far too few Rats to hit with my Traders; maybe if I had ordered things differently I would have outpaced the King's Court plan.

19

Dominion General Discussion / What to buy for $3?

« on: October 07, 2013, 09:56:30 pm »

I played a 3-player game IRL, and a situation came up which seemed interesting. The kingdom, with Colony, was:

• Peddler
• Treasury
• Feodum
• Moneylender
• Explorer
• Cutpurse
• Conspirator
• Warehouse
• Lighthouse
• Embargo

With no draw, village, or +buy, we all decided to try and build a Treasury/Peddler chain to activate Conspirators, with a Moneylender to trash coppers (it later turned out that Conspirators weren't that important; nobody had more than one, electing instead to use one Platinum for money).

One player opened Moneylender/Warehouse, and was faced with a decision at turn 3 when he drew EECCC. He elected to buy a Silver, which helped in the short term, but with no way to trash it and with minimal sifting, it really clogged up his deck in the race for Colony.

So I wonder, what is the right choice here? A Silver helps now, but probably hurts later; a Warehouse helps later, when your deck is full of green, but it's hard to buy cards early or trash coppers if two Warehouse plays have gotten you down to three cards. Is it perhaps even right to buy nothing at all?

20

Game Reports / A simple-looking board

« on: September 21, 2013, 05:29:46 am »

This kingdom included Colonies, but not Shelters. What do I do here? I think I've played enough to recognize plausible strategies, but I don't really know how to tell which will be better/faster. There are very few plausible choices here: the only ones I can really see are (a) Rebuild (with Count?), (b) BM with Labs and probably Council Room.

But how can I figure out which one will work better? Remake or Familiar also might feature into either of those plans, but I can't tell whether the time investment will be worth it.

I went for BM/Lab, starting off with Remake to get rid of Coppers and get some early Silver; my T4 Horse Traders feels pretty questionable, but I thought I needed a +buy, and discarding/coins would be more useful than drawing until I had sorted things out with Remake. I skipped Familiar, figuring I couldn't afford to spend any early buys on it, and with Remake/Count present, either player would be well-equipped to trash curses.

As it happens, my opponent went for Rebuild and lost, but I think he played his deck pretty poorly, so that doesn't really tell me much about whether Rebuild is better here.

21

Help! / Why did I win this?

« on: September 17, 2013, 01:00:59 am »

I played a kingdom recently that had me completely stumped as to the right approach:

I know Jack and Chapel are both strong cards, and I usually can do okay when I open Chapel, but I don't have enough experience with Jack to know what goes well with it (or how to play such decks). Chapel/Jack felt like too-aggressive trashing, and I didn't think I could put together enough of an engine to justify opening Chapel, but other than that I really had no idea what to do. As you can see from the log my early buys didn't really go together well at all (Shanty town, Jack, Silver, Feodum, Upgrade); I was just sorta buying things I could afford and hoping for the best. At some point I realized I was getting a lot of silvers and could probably make Feodum work, but I don't know if that really made sense.

So, what should I have done and why? Somehow I collected 4 Provinces and some hefty Feodums, but I don't understand why it worked out, or if what I did was even a viable plan or just very lucky draws or something.

22

Dominion General Discussion / Which rush to play?

« on: September 08, 2013, 04:31:06 am »

I just played a kingdom for which I thought I had found the obvious strategy, but my opponent opened something else that I hadn't noticed but is also clearly strong. So I'm wondering which was the better choice.

I saw Fool's Gold and Market Square, and thought: "Great, a cheap +buy to gain multiple FG, this looks like a great way to hit Province very fast." But my opponent opened Feast/Estate and focused heavily on Rebuild. I think he would have beaten me if he had gotten a third Rebuild on turn 9 instead of going exclusively green: later on it became hard for him to draw a Rebuild, which gave me the time I needed to get Provinces.

Is it well-known which of these ploys will win most often? I assume if we had started with Estates instead of shelters Feast->Rebuild would be clearly better, but I'm not sure here.

23

Dominion General Discussion / Bad plan, bad tactics, or bad luck?

« on: September 03, 2013, 12:29:29 am »

I tried my first moneyless deck recently, and just barely lost against an opponent who went big money hoard. i'm hoping to find out where I went wrong.

Was my entire strategy wrong? I felt like I had a little trouble finding my poor houses, so perhaps I needed a kingdom with better draw, or perhaps poor house is just less suitable in a colony game.

Did I play the deck wrong? I thought I should get a couple bishops with my spare buys so they could trash mediocre cards for VPs, and that sorta worked, but I think they clogged things up more than they helped, and that more poor houses would have helped me connect a lot more. I'm also not sure about the number of fishing villages I had: with no draw cards, each one was a card gone from my hand, but I needed them to play poor houses. Bishop-trashing the colonies to keep my deck thin felt right, but that could also have been a mistake.

Or did I just get unlucky? Hitting all three of my bishops together at a time when almost anything else would have been a win felt pretty unlucky, but really I think I probably brought it on myself.

24

Dominion General Discussion / When to green

« on: August 23, 2013, 03:57:09 am »

I was practicing against a bot, and although I won, and felt I was playing well, I realized later by looking at the score graph that I may have made an important mistake; I'd like to see if you all agree with my assessment. Incidentally, is this the right sub-forum for such questions? I don't want to clog up the "general discussion" forum if there's a better location.

Basically I tried to build an engine with festival/laboratory/smithy. I added a throne room  for flavor/flexibility, but I'm not sure it was a good choice. I was a little cautious about taking this approach because the lack of a chapel meant I'd have ten junk cards in my deck to overcome, but I think the other engine-friendly cards available still made this better than big-money. Does that sound right?

Anyway, I noticed that I picked up my first province on turn 11, but the game didn't end until turn 16, and I wonder if I should have built up a little longer. Obviously the first two provinces slow down my later turns, and I might have been able to double-province multiple times, or perhaps even triple-province, if I had skipped them. I think I was afraid the game was about to end, because my opponent was buying provinces, but given his big-money approach I should perhaps have realized he wouldn't be able to keep buying them forever. How do I know when to say "enough is enough" and start trying to grab provinces?

Thanks in advance for your time!

25

Dominion General Discussion / Newcomer strategy question

« on: August 22, 2013, 01:58:14 am »

I've only been playing for a month or so, and mostly against friends who've played even less. I've noticed that I try to build an engine in every game, which is obviously wrong but a lot of fun. Anyway, tonight I played a kingdom that I'd like some feedback on.

• Vineyard
• University
• Watchtower
• Golem
• Apprentice
• Council room
• Venture
• Royal seal
• Library
• Counting house

Three player game, no shelters or colonies, and I'm last to play with 3 coppers. I thought I'd try my first vineyard game, with the general idea of using golem to play many universities, and libraries or council rooms to help me draw more golems, with a couple apprentices to pick up the slack when I can't draw enough, and then grab vineyards once I have all that working. I later realized I needed council rooms for the +buy, and my libraries were basically useless.

• Does that seem like a viable plan? It seems like a few too many different cards to work together well.
• If the plan is viable, how do I play the first few turns? I tried watchtower/potion, hoping to draw 4p earlyish, or maybe topdeck a university; but maybe silver/potion would be better, or maybe I should have built up something else for a while before trying for golems?
• How would you have approached this kingdom instead?

For the record, this worked once I switched to Council Room, but only barely: 1st player got the last province, ending the game tied on VPs but with one more turn taken than me. No log since it was an offline game, but I ended with 1 Estate, 3 Province, 3 Vineyard, some treasure, and 13 action cards that I was using for my engine.